Palau – Page 57 – Prog Gold

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, washed the t-shirt 23 times, threw the t-shirt in the ragbag, now I'm polishing furniture with it.

http://cloggie.org/proggold

Yet More Taser Terror

Published on September 26, 2008

Digby:

This video is so awful, it will make you sick to watch it.

An officer appears to have violated police department guidelines when he used a Taser stun gun on a naked, distraught man teetering on a building ledge, officials said Thursday.

Inman Morales, 35, was pronounced dead at a hospital after his nearly 10-foot fall Wednesday. Police said he suffered serious head trauma when he hit the sidewalk.

[…]

Witnesses and neighbors said Morales had become distraught and threatened to kill himself earlier in the day. When police arrived in response to a 911 call, he fled naked out the window of his third-floor apartment, clambered down to a ledge and began jabbing at officers with an 8-foot-long fluorescent light.

An amateur video posted on the Web site of the New York Post shows one of the officers raising a stun gun at Morales, who freezes and topples over headfirst as the crowd screams.

“They didn’t try to brace his fall. They did nothing. I’ve seen a lot of things in my time. But what they did was wrong,” said neighbor Kirk Giddens, 39, in Thursday editions of the Daily News.

While We’re On The Subject of Backward-Facing Bodily Emissions….

Published on September 26, 2008

..I came across this little nugget, so to speak, at trainee solicitors’ website Roll On Friday:

A man has been charged with battery after deliberately farting at a police officer. Jose Antonio Cruz was stopped for drink driving and taken back to the local police station. When officers tried to get him to take a breath test, Cuz apparently lifted his leg and let out a huge fart. He then wafted the smell towards them. Police say the sheer smell “created a contact of an insulting or provoking nature” and charged him with battery.

I see. Floating arse biscuits can be a weapon, too. I wonder, could one be charged with going equipped for carrying a concealed can of beans?

Vheen Svedeesh Cheffs Etteck!

Published on September 26, 2008

Hurdy bejurdy børk børk børk, this is a very weird story indeed.

It comes from The Local, Sweden’s news in English site:

Sabotage suspected in mass food poisoning

published: 26 Sep 08 09:43 CET

Sweden’s security service Säpo is investigating possible sabotage following an incident which left 140 people at the headquarters of Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv) suffering from dysentery.

Five suffered symptoms so severe they were admitted to hospital.

The bacteria are most often spread via contaminated water and food, but an examination of the restaurant cafeteria failed to uncover the source of the outbreak.

So far no traces of the bacteria have uncovered from any of the several tests performed in the cafeteria’s kitchen.

[…]

According to the Metro newspaper, the group claiming responsibility for the attack is a left-leaning, internet-based forum which had previously staged demonstrations outside of the association’s headquarters. [My emphasis]

Security has been stepped at the restaurant and health authorities continue working to localize the sources of the outbreak through continued interviews with around 300 people who visited the eatery over several days.

Huh? What left leaning organisation? Who? Where? Since when do disposable daily freesheets have crack investigative reporters?

Something smells in Sweden, and not just the dysentery.

Game Over

Published on September 26, 2008

Chilling news for online gamers, or for anyone who identifies themself online, really:

Gamer arrested over computer link to knife murder of Matthew Pyke
David Brown

A German computer gamer is being questioned by police over the murder of a university student after an apparent argument on an online discussion site.

Matthew Pyke, 20, who was found stabbed to death at his home in Nottingham, ran a website with his girlfriend dedicated to discussing the computer strategy game Advance Wars.

Days after his body was found, a German gamer calling himself David Heiss sent a message to Mr Pyke’s girlfriend apologising for “having caused so much trouble lately”.

Though it hardly matters now if you are pseudonymous; even the neophyte knows how to use network tools and resolve an IP address these days, witness the continual harassment of left-wingers by Michelle Malkin’s troop of flying buttmonkeys and of antifascists by website Redwatch [no link; you want it, google].

I see the amount of sheer blinding rage unleashed in some online gamers when they play and I can well imagine that to feel such extreme anger could carry someone with a lot of their ego invested in the game (forum, blog or comment thread) right over the edge.

But aren’t online communities self-regulating by consensus? Well no, of course not, no more so than RL. Other gamers may have been egging this dispute on, in which case they also bear responsibility for Matthew Pyke’s death:

Detectives are investigating if another fan of the game may have fallen out with Mr Pyke in cyberspace and then taken extreme revenge in real life.

Mr Pyke also published science fiction on the Wars Central site using the name Shade, and Mr Heiss, 21, contributed to the discussion forum under the name Eagle the Lightning.

One anonymous poster on the site forum suggested that other members may have known who was behind the killing. “We may know a lot of what was going on prior to the killing, but I, for one, am not going to say any more,” he said.